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Patterns and Drivers of Recent Disturbances Across the Temperate Forest Biome

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Patterns and Drivers of Recent Disturbances Across the Temperate Forest Biome ARTICLE DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06788-9 OPEN Patterns and drivers of recent disturbances across the temperate forest biome Andreas Sommerfeld 1, Cornelius Senf 1,2, Brian Buma 3, Anthony W. D’Amato 4, Tiphaine Després 5,6, Ignacio Díaz-Hormazábal7, Shawn Fraver8, Lee E. Frelich 9, Álvaro G. Gutiérrez 7, Sarah J. Hart10, Brian J. Harvey11, Hong S. He12, Tomáš Hlásny5, Andrés Holz 13, Thomas Kitzberger14, Dominik Kulakowski 15, David Lindenmayer 16, Akira S. Mori17, Jörg Müller18,19, Juan Paritsis 14, George L. W. Perry 20, Scott L. Stephens21, Miroslav Svoboda5, Monica G. Turner 22, Thomas T. Veblen23 & Rupert Seidl 1 1234567890():,; Increasing evidence indicates that forest disturbances are changing in response to global change, yet local variability in disturbance remains high. We quantified this considerable variability and analyzed whether recent disturbance episodes around the globe were con- sistently driven by climate, and if human influence modulates patterns of forest disturbance. We combined remote sensing data on recent (2001–2014) disturbances with in-depth local information for 50 protected landscapes and their surroundings across the temperate biome. Disturbance patterns are highly variable, and shaped by variation in disturbance agents and traits of prevailing tree species. However, high disturbance activity is consistently linked to warmer and drier than average conditions across the globe. Disturbances in protected areas are smaller and more complex in shape compared to their surroundings affected by human land use. This signal disappears in areas with high recent natural disturbance activity, underlining the potential of climate-mediated disturbance to transform forest landscapes. 1 University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna, Institute of Silviculture, Peter Jordan Straße 82, 1190 Wien, Austria. 2 Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany. 3 Dept. of Integrative Biology, University of Colorado, 1151 Arapahoe, Denver, CO 80204, USA. 4 University of Vermont, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, Aiken Center Room 204E, Burlington, VT 05495, USA. 5 Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 21 Prague 6, Czech Republic. 6 Institut de Recherche sur les Forêts, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 445 boulevard de l’Université, Rouyn-Noranda, QC J9X 5E4, Canada. 7 Facultad de Ciencias Agronómicas, Departamento de Ciencias Ambientales y Recursos Naturales Renovables, Universidad de Chile, Av. Santa Rosa 11315, La Pintana, 8820808 Santiago, Chile. 8 University of Maine, School of Forest Resources, 5755 Nutting Hall, Orono, Maine 04469, USA. 9 Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, 1530 Cleveland Ave. N., St.Paul, MN 55108, USA. 10 Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA. 11 School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. 12 School of Geographical Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China. 13 Department of Geography, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97201, USA. 14 INIBIOMA, CONICET-Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Quintral 1250, Bariloche, 8400 Rio Negro, Argentina. 15 Clark University, Graduate School of Geography, Worcester, MA 01602, USA. 16 Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. 17 Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, Yokohama 240-8501, Japan. 18 Field Station Fabrikschleichach, Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Glashüttenstraße 5, 96181 Rauhenebrach, Germany. 19 Bavarian Forest National Park, Freyunger Str. 2, 94481 Grafenau, Germany. 20 School of Environment, University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. 21 Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. 22 Department of Integrative Biology, Birge Hall, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA. 23 Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. These authors contributed equally: Andreas Sommerfeld, Cornelius Senf. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.S. (email: [email protected]) NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | (2018) 9:4355 | DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06788-9 | www.nature.com/naturecommunications 1 ARTICLE NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06788-9 atural disturbances are an essential component of forest local factors such as the topographic template of a landscape16 and ecosystems1. Yet, forest disturbance regimes are changing the influence of human land use17. A better understanding of N 2 in response to global climate change . Hotter and pro- global disturbance patterns and their multi-scale drivers is also longed droughts3, exceptional bark beetle outbreaks4, and mega- crucial for improving the representation of disturbances in global fires5 have been increasingly reported in recent years, and are vegetation models18,19, and can have important implications for impacting forest ecosystems across all forested continents2. policy decision making, e.g., in the context of climate change Changes in disturbance dynamics can have substantial impacts on mitigation20,21. ecosystem services provided by forests, e.g., climate regulation6,7, New opportunities for global forest disturbance research arise provisioning of drinking water8,9, and protection from natural from recent advances in remote sensing. Increasingly available hazards10, as well as affect conservation of biological diversity11. remotely sensed datasets on forest disturbance22 offer high spatial Quantifying disturbance patterns (i.e., the size, shape, and pre- resolution and are globally consistent, enabling large-scale com- valence of disturbances in forest landscapes) and understanding parative efforts. However, while the global mapping of forest their drivers is thus a key challenge for ecological research. disturbances is now feasible23,24, attributing disturbance agents While the potential drivers of the ongoing disturbance change from remote sensing data and distinguishing between natural and are global, the responses to these drivers vary considerably at the anthropogenic disturbances remains challenging25. Furthermore, local scale. Insights from well-studied systems such as Yellowstone ecological context information such as the prevailing tree species National Park in North America1, the Bohemian Forest ecosystem composition cannot usually be gleaned from space, underlining in Europe12, and the O’Shannassy water catchment in Australia13 the importance of terrestrial information and local ecosystem have provided important insights into the complex interactions understanding for a meaningful interpretation of remotely sensed between climate variability, disturbances, and forest development. disturbance information. Integrating remote sensing analyses While an in-depth understanding of disturbance dynamics exists with in-depth knowledge on selected ecosystems across the globe for a growing number of landscapes (i.e., contiguous land areas of can provide new insights by combining the consistent synoptic roughly between 103 and 106 ha) around the globe, their responses view of satellite analysis with the expertise and insights gained to global drivers have not consistently been compared to date. from decades of local forest disturbance research. Questions such as whether recent bark beetle outbreaks in North Our objective was to analyze patterns and drivers of recent America differ from those in Europe with regard to their climate disturbances across temperate forests at the global scale. We sensitivity, or whether recent fires in Australia created similar compiled a global network of 50 protected forest landscapes each patterns as those in the Americas remain largely unexplored. with > 2000 ha contiguous forest area (Fig. 1) for which in-depth Comparing the variation in disturbance patterns and their rela- local systems knowledge exists. We jointly analyzed severe canopy tionship to climate variability among landscapes at subcontinental disturbances (i.e., complete mortality of all trees taller 5 m within to global scales14,15 has the potential to elucidate whether recent a 30 m grid cell) in these landscapes using Landsat-derived dis- disturbance episodes were consistently driven by climate across turbance maps for 2001–201424. Focusing our network of land- continents, or whether climate sensitivities differ between systems. scapes on protected areas and their surroundings allowed us to Furthermore, such a comparison can shed light on how regional- isolate patterns of natural disturbances (inside protected areas) to continental-scale drivers such as climate variability interact with from those of areas where natural and human disturbances 17 45 a 30 11 25 16 22 39 1 12 5 15 36 21 49 38 6 37 50 24 9 20 31 13 40 29 32 48 b 3000 3 47 10 7 35 27 43 4 1 18 19 2000 33 42 8 41 19 26 17 34 26 8 28 43 38 31 21 46 37 46 34 39 10 4 2 30 29 36 6 14 23 32 24 9 44 5 23 42 1000 47 28 48 40 11 45 22 2 18 27 12 50 15 16 20 14 3 41 Mean annual precipitation [mm] Mean annual 7 Temperate biome 13 49 25 33 0 44 35 –10 0 10 20 Mean annual temperature [°C] Fig. 1 A network of 50 protected landscapes to understand global patterns and drivers of temperate forest disturbances. a The geographic
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